Glow for all

My recent work in using Glow in the initial stages in Aberdeen City has prompted me to dig out this old blog and write a post.
I am working on a P7-S1 Transition Grow Group with a colleague from our asg Secondary school. While working together last week, he wanted to put some video on a website of his own and link to that whereas I would have preferred to put the video on Teacher Tube and get the embed code.
In fact there were everal things that my colleague was doing that I did not fully understand. But I realised that it did not matter!
He could work on his bits at his own level and I could work at mine! And this is the message that I think is important for Glow Mentors to get across to the many teachers who may be worried about Glow.
While the concept of Glow is no problem to all the technophiles out there, the majority of teachers are not yet working with web2 tools. I think the message needs to be that people can work at their own level and develop from there. When I started my class blog a couple of years ago, I posted only text. I then wanted to put pictures and later started to embed code etc. But I worked and learned at my own pace!
I have seen too much criticism of others recently and do not think that this is helpful to encouraging others to start something that they may not be that comfortable with.
Inspirational blogs like that of Ewan McIntosh and Nik Peachey and many others will always be helpful and show people what they could aspire to, but let's try to have a culture of help and encouragement, rather than criticism.

A very useful Blog

I recently discovered Nik Peachey's blog. It is packed full of ideas and carefully thought out evaluations of fabulous web2 tools, many of which I had not come across.
His blog is different in that it is full of ideas to help teachers but Nik offers only his opinions of the tools rather than of the practice of others. A very refreshing change!

Voices of the World

After posting our March contribution to this great project, I had a look at what we had done so far. Both the pupils and I have learned a lot of new skills in using some of the brilliant web tools that are available out there all free of charge. These tools are excellent for encouraging creativity. The success of this project is thanks to the hard work of Sharon Tonner.